Uncle Tom's Cabin Uncle Tom's Cabin info@stowecenter.org Uncle Tom's Cabin Uncle Tom's Cabin was initially released in serial format in the National Era, a weekly newspaper, from June 5, 1851-April 1, 1852. See HERE for the text of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as originally released in The National Era. You will find each chapter, followed by scholarly commentary, and links to Stowe’s A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and related materials. Click HERE to see photos from the 2014 Marathon Reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Click HERE to visit the award-winning website, Uncle Tom's Cabin: Generating a Rising Tide of Responsibility to End the Institution of Slavery. Two eight-grade students from Cleveland, Ohio created the site which placed 4th in the nation at the 2014 National History Day and won a Chronicling America Award from the Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities. Harriet Beecher Stowe's best known novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), changed forever how Americans viewed slavery, the system that treated people as property.

It demanded that the United States deliver on the promise of freedom and equality, galvanized the abolition movement and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. The book calls on us to confront the legacy of race relations in the U.S. as the title itself became a racial slur. Uncle Tom's Cabin was a runaway best-seller, selling 10,000 copies in the United States in its first week; 300,000 in the first year; and in Great Britain, 1.5 million copies in one year. It resonates with an international audience as a protest novel and literary work. LEARN how Stowe encouraged President Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Background: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Slavery As a young wife and mother living in Cincinnati, Harriet Beecher Stowe met former and fugitive enslaved people. Cincinnati, then the western frontier of the United States, was an ethnically and culturally vibrant city. On the Ohio River across from Kentucky, a slave state, the city exposed Stowe to the public face of slavery. Stowe knew about slavery before she moved to Ohio.

Her own grandmother kept African American servants who had probably originally been enslaved, and her father had preached in favor of the colonization movement, supporting the creation of Liberia as a settling point for freed people. But in Ohio, Stowe heard first hand stories from former enslaved people; witnessed slavery while visiting Kentucky; and employed fugitives in her home. When Harriet and Calvin learned that their servant was actually a runaway in danger of being returned to slavery, Calvin and Harriet's brother Henry Ward Beecher helped her escape and reach Canada and legal freedom. "...the enslaving of the African race is a clear violation of the great law which commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves" Stowe also learned that even the discussion of slavery could divide a community when students at her father's school, Lane Seminary, rioted after anti-slavery debates were forbidden. Background: The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act On September 18, 1850, the U.S. Congress passed the Compromise of 1850. Although intended to address the concerns of slave holding and free states, and thus preserve the Union, historians disagree whether the Compromise diffused or fortified sectional interests.

There is no doubt, however, that it helped galvanize the abolition movement and clarify Stowe's personal stance on slavery. Among the provisions of the Compromise of 1850 were the end of the slave trade, but not slavery, in Washington D.C., and the creation of a new, stricter, Fugitive Slave Law. Helping runaways had been illegal since 1793, but the 1850 law required that everyone, law enforcers and ordinary citizens, help catch fugitives. Those who refused to assist slave-catchers, or aided fugitives, could be fined up to $1,000 and jailed for six months. It also eliminated what little legal protection fugitives once had. Before 1850, some northern states had required slave-catchers to appear before an elected judge and be tried by a jury which would determine the validity of a claim. After the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, anyone could be taken from the street, accused of being a fugitive from slavery, and taken before a federally appointed commissioner who received $5 for every fugitive released and $10 for every one sent south.

Free blacks and anti-slavery groups argued the system bribed commissioners to send kidnapped people into slavery, and obliged citizens to participate in the slavery system. Stowe was furious. She believed the country was requiring her complicity in a system she thought was unjust and immoral. Living in Brunswick, ME while Calvin Stowe taught at Bowdoin College, Stowe disobeyed the law by hiding runaways. When she shared her frustrations and feelings of powerlessness with her family, her sister-in-law Isabella Porter Beecher suggested she do more: "...if I could use a pen as you can, Hatty, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is." Moved by the letter, Stowe swore she would "if [she] lived." The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin The first installment of Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared on June 5, 1851 in the anti-slavery newspaper, The National Era. Stowe enlisted friends and family to send her information and scoured freedom narratives and anti-slavery newspapers for first hand accounts as she composed her story. In 1852 the serial was published as a two volume book.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was a best seller in the United States, Britain, Europe and Asia, and was translated into over 60 languages In 2012, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Executive Director Katherine Kane lent expertise to a NEWS STORY about an archeological site related to former slave Josiah Henson. Harriet Beecher Stowe used Henson's story, along with that of other slaves, to develop the character of Uncle Tom in her famous antislavery novel. Synopsis of Uncle Tom's Cabin "I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is." Uncle Tom's Cabin opens on the Shelby plantation in Kentucky as two enslaved people, Tom and 4-year old Harry, are sold to pay Shelby family debts. Developing two plot lines, the story focuses on Tom, a strong, religious man living with his wife and 3 young children, and Eliza, Harry's mother. When the novel begins, Eliza's husband George Harris, unaware of Harry's danger, has already escaped, planning to later purchase his family's freedom. To protect her son, Eliza runs away, making a dramatic escape over the frozen Ohio River with Harry in her arms.

Eventually the Harris family is reunited and journeys north to Canada. Tom protects his family by choosing not to run away so the others may stay together. Sold south, he meets Topsy, a young, black girl whose mischievous behavior hides her pain; Eva, the angelic, young, white girl whose death moved Victorians to tears; charming, elegant but passive St. Clare; and finally, cruel, violent Simon Legree. Tom's deep faith gives him an inner strength that frustrates his enemies as he moves toward his fate in Louisiana. The novel ends when both Tom and Eliza escape slavery: Eliza and her family reach Canada; but Tom's freedom comes with death. Simon Legree, Tom's third and final master, has Tom whipped to death for refusing to deny his faith or betray the hiding place of two fugitive women.

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center | 77 Forest Street | Hartford, CT 06105 | Phone: 860-522-9258 | Fax: 860-522-9259 | info@stowecenter.org Uncle Tom's Cabin (Wordsworth Classics): Harriet Beecher Stowe: 9781840224023: Amazon.com: Books Uncle Tom's Cabin (Wordsworth Classics) by Why is ISBN important? ISBN This bar-code number lets you verify that you're getting exactly the right version or edition of a book. The 13-digit and 10-digit formats both work. Scan an ISBN with your phone Use the Amazon App to scan ISBNs and compare prices. Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon Add to List Sorry, there was a problem. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again. Sorry, there was a problem. List unavailable. In Stock. Sold by Murfbooks, Fulfilled by Amazon Condition: Used: Acceptable Comment: Item is in acceptable condition. Expect heavy wear on the cover and the inside of the book. The text is perfectly readable and usable.

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To learn more about Amazon Sponsored Products, click here . Editorial Reviews Review "Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most powerful and enduring work of art ever written about American slavery." --Alfred Kazin Read more From the Publisher Founded in 1906 by J.M. Dent, the Everyman Library has always tried to make the best books ever written available to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible price. Unique editorial features that help Everyman Paperback Classics stand out from the crowd include: a leading scholar or literary critic's introduction to the text, a biography of the author, a chronology of her or his life and times, a historical selection of criticism, and a concise plot summary. All books published since 1993 have also been completely restyled: all type has been reset, to offer a clarity and ease of reading unique among editions of the classics; a vibrant, full-color cover design now complements these great texts with beautiful contemporary works of art. But the best feature must be Everyman's uniquely low price. Each Everyman title offers these extensive materials at a price that competes with the most inexpensive editions on the market-but Everyman Paperbacks have durable binding, quality paper, and the highest editorial and scholarly standards.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . New York Times best sellers Browse the New York Times best sellers in popular categories like Fiction, Nonfiction, Picture Books and more. See more Product Details Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd (December 5, 1999) Language: English Shipping Weight: 12 ounces ( View shipping rates and policies ) Average Customer Review: By Danetra King on February 14, 2016 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase Harriet Beecher Stoweâs, âUncle Tomâs Cabinâ is a book worth reading. Inside the cover of this old time favorite, Stowe easily takes readers inside the minds the slaves, the slave owners, and those with abolitionist-like minds. She skillfully winds you through the different paths of characters and creates a mostly satisfying conclusion. One that does leave a bit of grief, questioning and enlightenment on both the heart and mind. I would not recommend this book to those who are quickly angered by racial slurs or degradation of any kind.

I think one of the most difficult things for readers in the present will be remembering that for the time period of this book, that the language used was part of the culture. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to feel enlightened and full of hope, despite the hardship you must follow in order to feel them. Uncle Tom himself is a beacon of true light and he honestly made me want be a better person. This book is smart, real and oddly uplifting. Because of some of the language used, I only recommend this to readers 15 and up. You will not regret reading this truly heart wrenching and yet, inspiring story. By TC on January 3, 2017 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase This story written so very long ago, so many of the situations and comments were topical and relevant to the current event of the time it was written, and yet this story still has something valuable to say to people living in our modern world. That there is value in every life, that hope and faith (either or both) will pull you through almost any tragedy or any horrific situation that cold heartless and thoughtless humans can throw at a person.

It is most incredible to me that at the time of publishing, even the church was confident in stating that slavery was not so bad, that there were "good masters" and that incidents of cruelty and harm were rare. But they were blind and false in their conclusions. There may have been some kind masters but as was shown many times in the story, the slave's life with them was tenuous at best. A kind master's death or debt would invariably mean every possession would be sold. And each of his slaves were as much a chattel as his furniture. It is difficult to assimilate that attitude now. Families were routinely ripped apart, babies and children taken from mothers, husbands or wives taken and sold separately and told they should just forget their spouse and marry another. Horribly violent beatings and living conditions bad enough to demoralize anyone and destroy any hope of kindness or relief. Only a few people stood out as having any kindness and love or actively did and said things that would improve the lives of the slaves. The characters depicted, were drawn from true life and experiences of the author and those known to her.

The most incredible incidences of the tale are also depicitons of true events and all this makes Uncle Tom's Cabin a story that is worth anyone's time. Even without those elements of truth, the story rolls along with colourful descriptions of both character and place so as to bring the whole tale to life in a most realistic way. I am so glad that I read this book. Harriet Beacher Stowe is an amazing storyteller and a powerful teacher for what is right, just and good. By brian rose on October 25, 2014 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase this title defies the rating process since it has stood for more than a century and a half as the quintessential novel about the gross injustices of the slave trade which defined American society in its formative years. Uncle Tom's Cabin reveals an insight, not only into the private lives of the slaves, but also those of the plantation owners and the traders themselves. It is difficult to comprehend that Americans considered themselves "civilized" while their society condoned such brutality and unethical practices.

Although the author's religious beliefs are entrenched in the story and indeed, become an overwhelming factor towards the end of the book, those same Christian tenets are nonetheless shown to be a source of supreme comfort to the protagonist who undergoes all manner of hardship and disappointment. No doubt this story was, in part, responsible for the eventual abolition of slavery and again retold in the tumultuous years prior to the dismantling of legal segregation. May it stand as a reminder that subjugation has no place in a civilized world. Lest We Forget! Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published - Mar 20, 1852 - HISTORY.com Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published Share this: Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published Author Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published URL Publisher A+E Networks Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is published.

The novel sold 300,000 copies within three months and was so widely read that when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he reportedly said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.” Stowe was born in 1811, the seventh child of the famous Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher. She studied at private schools in Connecticut , then taught in Hartford from 1827 until her father moved to Cincinnati in 1832. She accompanied him and continued to teach while writing stories and essays. In 1836, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe, with whom she had seven children. She published her first book, Mayflower, in 1843. While living in Cincinnati, Stowe encountered fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad . Later, she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in reaction to recently tightened fugitive slave laws. The book had a major influence on the way the American public viewed slavery. The book established Stowe’s reputation as a woman of letters. She traveled to England in 1853, where she was welcomed as a literary hero.

Along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, she became one of the original contributors to The Atlantic, which launched in November 1857. In 1863, when Lincoln announced the end of slavery, she danced in the streets. Stowe continued to write throughout her life and died in 1896. Related Videos Harriet Beecher Stowe — Uncle Tom's Cabin [ushistory.org] Eliza is forced to flee dogs and slave-catchers in Uncle Tom's Cabin. "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war." This was Abraham Lincoln's reported greeting to Harriet Beecher Stowe when he met her ten years after her book Uncle Tom's Cabin was published. Although the President may have been exaggerating a bit, few novels in American history have grabbed the public spotlight and caused as great an uproar as Uncle Tom's Cabin. Across the north, readers became acutely aware of the horrors of slavery on a far more personal level than ever before. In the south the book was met with outrage and branded an irresponsible book of distortions and overstatements.

In such an explosive environment, her story greatly furthered the Abolitionist cause north of the Mason-Dixon Line and promoted sheer indignation in plantation America. Library of Congress LC-USZC4-6171 (3-10) Stage plays and movies were made of the controversial abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, although most of the characters were played by white actors and many of the characters became stereotypical caricatures. Harriet Beecher Stowe was born into a prominent family of preachers. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was one of the most renowned ministers in his generation. Her brother Henry Ward Beecher was already an outspoken Abolitionist, and by the mid 1850s would become the driving force behind aiding the Free-Soil cause in "bleeding Kansas" (not permitting slavery in the new territory). While living for a short while in Cincinnati, Stowe became exposed to actual runaway slaves. Her heart ached at the wretched tales she heard. She began to write a series of short stories depicting the plight of plantation slaves. Encouraged by her sister-in-law, Stowe decided to pen a novel.

First published as a series in 1851, it first appeared as a book the following year. The heart-wrenching tale portrays slave families forced to cope with separation by masters through sale. Uncle Tom mourns for the family he was forced to leave. In one heroic scene, Eliza makes a daring dash across the frozen Ohio River to prevent the sale of her son by slave traders. The novel also takes the perspective that slavery brings out the worst in the white masters, leading them to perpetrate moral atrocities they would otherwise never commit. Harriet Beecher Stowe lost a child in infancy, an experience that she said made her empathize with the losses suffered by slave mothers whose children were sold. The reaction was incredible. Uncle Tom's Cabin sold 300,000 copies in the North alone. The Fugitive Slave Law, passed in 1850, could hardly be enforced by any of Stowe's readers. Although banned in most of the south, it served as another log on the growing fire. The book sold even more copies in Great Britain than in the United States. This had an immeasurable appeal in swaying British public opinion.

Many members of the British Parliament relished the idea of a divided United States. Ten years after the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the British people made it difficult for its government to support the Confederacy, even though there were strong economic ties to the South. In the end, Mr. Lincoln may not have been stretching the truth after all. Harriet Beecher Stowe: Mother and Reformer The death from cholera of her young son Charley caused Harriet Beecher Stowe to empathize with slave mothers whose children were so often torn from them, and so it planted the seed for Uncle Tom's Cabin. This beautifully illustrated website offers excerpts of the book and several of Mrs. Stowe's personal letters touching on issues of motherhood. The Beechers Both Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Catherine Beecher were advocates of women's education. Although they collaborated on "The New Housekeeper's Manual," a guide to the "woman's domain" they disagreed on whether women should step beyond that sphere to engage in political action. This short commentary from the University of Pennsylvania explains. Report broken link ... I HAVE BEEN the mother of seven children, the most beautiful and most loved of whom lies buried near my Cincinnati residence.

It was at his dying bed and at his grave that I learned what a poor slave mother may feel when her child is torn away from her. Frederick Stowe: In the Shadow of Uncle Tom’s Cabin By James Tackach ‘So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war! President Abraham Lincoln reportedly said to Harriet Beecher Stowe when he met her at a White House reception on December 2, 1862. Lincoln’s hyperbole held a degree of truth. Stowe’s blockbuster novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, serialized in The National Era in 1851 and 1852 and published in book form shortly thereafter, had so highlighted the issue of slavery that, a decade later, America’s young men were willing to slaughter each other in unimaginable numbers to preserve or destroy that peculiar institution. Ironically, one of the casualties of the war that Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped to ignite was Frederick William Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fourth child.

A veteran of some of the Army of the Potomac’s bloodiest engagements, Frederick Stowe became an official war casualty at Gettysburg when he was hit in the head by a shell, fired during the artillery barrage before Pickett’s Charge. But the war alone was not responsible for the ruination of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s son. Frederick Stowe was already a casualty long before the Confederate guns began firing upon Fort Sumter–to some degree a casualty of his mother’s fame. Mrs. Stowe’s writings might have helped free America’s slaves, but her literary fame and the demands it placed upon her complicated Frederick’s upbringing, perhaps creating problems that worsened as a result of his wartime service. Harriet Beecher Stowe and her husband, Calvin, were New Englanders. Harriet had moved to Ohio in 1832 with her father, Lyman Beecher, who had taken a teaching post at Lane Seminary. Calvin Stowe and his first wife, Eliza, had also left the East for Ohio so that he could teach at the seminary.

Seventeen months after Eliza died in a cholera epidemic that swept through Cincinnati during the summer of 1834, Calvin married Harriet. Twin girls, Hatty and Eliza, were born to the couple in September 1836, and Henry Ellis Stowe was born 16 months later. Frederick William Stowe was born in Walnut Hills, Ohio, near Cincinnati, on May 6, 1840. Read More in Civil War Times Magazine Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!! Harriet Stowe was bedridden for two months after the birth of her fourth child, so Frederick was sent to live with a wet nurse in Cincinnati–the first of many separations from his mother that Frederick endured during the first 15 years of his life. Calvin, too, was often away from home, lecturing and raising funds to keep the ever-troubled Lane Seminary financially solvent. The Stowe family suffered through numerous personal and family tragedies. In the summer of 1843, when Frederick was 3, Harriet’s brother George shocked the family by committing suicide. During the next three years, Harriet suffered two miscarriages and became ill with cholera.

Tragedy struck again two years later, when the Stowes’ third son, Samuel Charles, born in January 1848, died of cholera at the age of 18 months. Less than a year after the boy’s death, the Stowe household was again disrupted. Calvin accepted a teaching position at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and in April 1850 Harriet and her three older children–the twins and Henry Ellis–headed east to set up household there. In Maine, Harriet began writing the novel that would make her famous, completing weekly installments of Uncle Tom’s Cabin for The National Era from June 5, 1851, through April 1, 1852. The novel made Harriet an overnight celebrity. Public speaking engagements followed, and in the spring of 1853 she sailed to Great Britain to spread the anti-slavery doctrine there. While Harriet was writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin and carrying its message across the United States and abroad, Calvin Stowe was struggling with his own career. He taught for a semester at Bowdoin, then returned to Lane Seminary in Ohio for a term.

At the same time, Calvin was offered an attractive position at Andover Theological Seminary in Andover, Mass., which he decided to accept. For a period of two years he became a traveling professor, teaching at three schools and commuting incredible distances to honor the commitments he had made to each institution. As she was arranging for the publication of her first book of short stories in 1842, Harriet had questioned whether her professional efforts would negatively affect her children. Our children are just coming to the age when everything depends on my efforts, she wrote. They are delicate in health, and nervous and excitable, and need a mother’s whole attention. Can I lawfully divide my attention by literary efforts? Biographers disagree to what extent her career negatively affected her children. Certainly, there were factors out of her control, such as young Samuel Charles’ dying of cholera and Henry Ellis’ drowning when he was 19 years old. Frederick’s sister Georgiana May, born in 1843, became addicted to morphine and died in her 40s. As for Frederick himself, his problem was alcohol, a common enough vice in the mid-19th century.

By the age of 16, he was a full-blown alcoholic. While his mother was touring Europe in 1856 and 1857, Frederick’s father sent him to his uncle, Thomas Beecher, to dry out. The Rev. Thomas Beecher operated a storefront church in Elmira, N.Y., and he had firsthand experience and success working with alcoholics, prostitutes and derelicts. Beecher committed Frederick to a nearby facility that specialized in the water cure, a mid-19th-century form of therapy that was used to cure depression, alcoholism and various physical maladies. Water cure patients bathed frequently, drank large quantities of fresh spring water and were wrapped daily in dampened blankets in an effort to purify their bodies of harmful substances. Just as it seemed that Frederick was on the road to recovery, the Stowe family experienced another devastating tragedy when Henry Ellis drowned while he and several of his Dartmouth College classmates were swimming in the Connecticut River. At the very moment when Frederick needed his parents most to support his recovery, they were distracted by yet another family catastrophe. Nonetheless, Frederick was determined to set his life straight.

In August 1859, he joined part of the Stowe family for a European tour. He hoped that vigorous hiking would help cure him of his craving for alcohol. On March 31, 1860, Frederick wrote to his father from Rome, admitting that he had been a very troublesome thing…for a long while and expressing hope that, when he returned to America, he would be a comfort to him. He claimed to have changed a great deal while traveling. Frederick returned to the United States and enrolled at Harvard Medical School for the fall 1860 semester. Many of his uncles had entered the ministry, but he thought that a physician’s career was one that would also bring the family great honor. In the spring of Frederick’s first year at Harvard, the Civil War abruptly interrupted his plans for a medical career. After President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteer troops to put down the rebellion, Frederick joined Company A of the 1st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which was formed in May 1861. For three weeks, the regiment headquartered at Boston’s Faneuil Hall and drilled before patriotic spectators on Boston Common.

While Frederick trained, his mother wrote letters in which she fretted about the temptations and dangers of the camp that her son might confront and about his being prisoner among barbarians, or wounded and helpless. In mid-June, the new troops boarded a ship for Washington, D.C., making a stop in Jersey City. While Frederick’s boat was docked there, his mother was visiting her brother in New York City. Hearing that her soldier son was nearby, Harriet boarded the Fulton Ferry and traveled to New Jersey to meet him. In a letter to her husband the next day, she described the young soldier as bristling with knapsack and haversack, and looking like an assortment of packages. He was in high spirits, and Harriet stuffed his pockets with fresh oranges. Frederick saw his first action a month later. On July 16, 1861, Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell led 35,000 Union soldiers toward Confederate troops massed at a railroad junction near Manassas, Va. En route, men from the 1st Massachusetts looted stores in Vienna and burned houses in Germantown.

They got their first taste of battle on July 18 as they approached Bull Run Creek, near Blackburn’s Ford. There, Brig. Gen. Daniel Tyler, Stowe’s divisional commander, sent men from the 1st Massachusetts and 12th New York regiments against Rebel troops stationed on the opposite bank of Bull Run. The Confederates beat back the Federal assault, killing 13 men in Stowe’s regiment and wounding 20 others. Three days later, the First Battle of Bull Run was fought. After that catastrophic Union defeat, Stowe was truly a veteran soldier, and he received a promotion to sergeant when his regiment regrouped in Washington. For the next two years, Stowe saw little action. The 1st Massachusetts remained encamped near Washington for several months. In January 1862, he was transferred to the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery Regiment, which was assigned to garrison duty at Fort Runyon and other nearby forts southwest of Washington. The presence of a celebrity’s son in the regiment thrilled Frederick’s new comrades, prompting the regimental historian to note his arrival in his journal and comment that he had considerable social prestige. Stowe was soon promoted to second lieutenant.

Garrison duty was monotonous; days were filled with endless drills and guard duty. For Stowe, who was still drying himself out, the temptation to drink came often, despite nightly temperance meetings in Union camps. On September 17, 1862, Stowe wrote to his mother and complained about the dreariness of camp life: My regt will neaver [sic] go into action and so long as I remain here I shall neaver be advanced. Harriet quickly acted on her son’s complaint. She traveled to Washington in late November, stopping at Fort Runyon to see Frederick before meeting with President Lincoln to discuss the forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation. While in Washington, she spoke with an old friend, Brig. Gen. Adolph von Steinwehr, a divisional commander in the Army of the Potomac’s XI Corps, about her son’s problem, and he agreed to appoint the young lieutenant to his personal staff as assistant adjutant general, with a promotion to captain. As a general’s aide-de-camp, Stowe was exempt from combat duty. He delivered messages and filed reports for his commanding officer, usually performing his duties a fair distance away from the fighting.

But that changed when the Union army moved onto the field at Gettysburg. The XI Corps was one of the first to arrive and clash with the Confederates at Gettysburg. At 1 p.m. on July 1, 1863, Maj. Gen. Oliver Howard followed Brig. Gen. John Buford’s cavalry onto the high ground outside the town. Howard sent part of his corps to meet the Confederate troops already sweeping through Gettysburg, and posted his remaining forces on Cemetery Hill. Frederick spent the duration of the Battle of Gettysburg on Cemetery Hill. His corps took heavy casualties during the battle for the hill on July 2, the second day of the conflict. The next day the men waited nervously for the inevitable final push that would determine the outcome of the battle. At about 2:30 p.m., a monstrous Rebel artillery barrage began on Cemetery Ridge to soften the Federal lines in preparation for Maj. Gen. George Pickett’s doomed charge. During the shelling, according to General von Steinwehr’s official report, Capt. F.W.

Stowe, assistant adjutant-general of this division, was…severely wounded in the head by a piece of shell. As word spread of the terrible battle at Gettysburg, the Stowes, like so many other Americans on the home front, waited anxiously for news. The family learned of Frederick’s wound almost two weeks later, via a letter from a Union chaplain. Addressed to Harriet, the letter stated that among the thousands of wounded and dying men on this war-scarred field was her son, who had been struck by a fragment of a shell, which entered his right-ear. The chaplain added that young Frederick was quiet–and cheerful, longs to see some member of his family, and is, above all, anxious that they should hear from him as soon as possible. When the makeshift hospitals on the Gettysburg battlefield were closed, Stowe was sent to New York City for extended care and recovery. In the fall of 1863, when it became apparent that his condition would not allow him to return to combat, he was honorably discharged from the Army of the Potomac.

Soon after his discharge, Frederick moved to his parents’ new home in Hartford and began drinking again, often disappearing for days at a time. When sober, he struggled hard to break his addiction. He joined the Episcopal Church, hoping that a new spiritual life would help dissuade him from the temptations of the flesh. His parents, thinking that a warm climate might help their wayward son, leased a cotton plantation and later purchased a citrus farm in Florida for Frederick to manage. But he continued drinking and failed miserably as a plantation overseer. In 1867, the Stowes paid for their son’s stay at an alcoholic treatment center in Binghamton, N.Y., but he was still unable to kick his habit. Stowe’s problems were a great embarrassment to his family, yet his mother stuck by his side. Harriet implored her daughters to understand their wayward brother. Fred was no weaker, no more unsuccessful against his besetting sin than you against yours–only the consequences to him are more fatal and dreadful, she wrote.

In another letter, Harriet asserted: Fred will not fall away so as to finally perish, and I have strong faith in his final recovery….God will hear my prayers and open some way of escape. Harriet’s prayers were not answered. During the summer of 1871, Frederick boarded a ship in Florida bound for the West Coast. He arrived safely in San Francisco after the long journey around Cape Horn. From there, he intended to go to sea, in hopes of breaking his alcohol addiction. But Frederick disappeared before boarding any ship. He was never heard from again. His parents hired private investigators, but no trace of their missing son was ever discovered. What happened to Frederick Stowe? Suicide is one possibility. A few months before disappearing, he wrote to his mother, [D]id I only think of my own confort [sic] I would kill myself and end it all, but I know that you and all the family would feel the disgrace such an end would bring upon you and the talk and scandle [sic] it would give rise to. Other explanations for Stowe’s disappearance are also plausible. Perhaps he met some gruesome end while touring the rough and rowdy waterfront taverns along San Francisco’s wharf.

Perhaps he was shanghaied and pressed into involuntary servitude aboard a sailing vessel for the rest of his life. Or he might simply have changed his identity and cut himself off from his family to avoid causing the Stowes further embarrassment. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Writing Influenced by Cincinnati Years Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Writing Influenced by Cincinnati Years by Mack Slocum on August 10, 2013 Chris Desimio and Helen Spoon of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, spoke recently at the Florence Rotary Club meeting about Ms. Stowe and her ties to the Greater Cincinnati area. When Harriet Beecher Stowe met President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he is said to have exclaimed, “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War!” The book she wrote, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, still resonates into today’s world, according to Chris Desimio and Helen Spoon of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, speaking recently at the Florence Rotary Club meeting about Ms. Stowe and her ties to the Greater Cincinnati area.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is operated as an historical and cultural site that also includes a look into the family, friends, and colleagues of the Beecher-Stowe family, Lane Seminary, and the abolitionist rights and Underground Railroad movements in which these historical figures participated in the 1830’s to 1860’s, as well as African-American history of the time. Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, but moved to Cincinnati to be with her father in the 1830s. She was well known during her lifetime as an author, abolitionist and advocate for women’s suffrage. “Harriet Beecher Stowe was the second most influential woman of the 19th century,” said Helen Spoon, “second only to Queen Victoria of England.” The family house, located at 2950 Gilbert Avenue in Cincinnati, was home to Harriet Beecher Stowe prior to her marriage, and to her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, and his large family, a prolific group of religious leaders, educators, writers, and antislavery and women’s rights advocates.

The Beecher family includes Harriet’s sister, Catherine Beecher, an early female educator and writer who helped found numerous high schools and colleges for women; brother Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, a leader of the women’s suffrage movement and considered by some to be the most eloquent minister of his time; General James Beecher, a Civil War general who commanded the first African-American troops in the Union Army recruited from the South; and sister Isabella Beecher Hooker, a women’s rights advocate. In Cincinnati, Harriet Beecher Stowe met and married Calvin Stowe, a theology professor she described as “rich in Greek & Hebrew, Latin & Arabic, & alas! rich in nothing else…” Six of Stowe’s seven children were born in Cincinnati, and in the summer of 1849, Stowe experienced for the first time the sorrow many 19th-century parents knew when her 18-month old son, Samuel Charles Stowe, died of cholera. Stowe later credited that crushing pain as one of the inspirations for Uncle Tom’s Cabin because it helped her understand the pain enslaved mothers felt when their children were taken from them to be sold.

The Beechers lived in Cincinnati for nearly 20 years, from 1832 to the early 1850’s, before returning east. Shortly after leaving Cincinnati and basing her writing on her experiences in Cincinnati, in 1851-1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe authored the best-selling book of its time, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a fictionalized popular account of the pain slavery imposed on its victims and of the difficult struggles of slaves to escape and travel, on the Underground Railroad, to freedom in the northern states or Canada. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a runaway best-seller, selling 10,000 copies in the United States in its first week; 300,000 in the first year; and in Great Britain, 1.5 million copies in one year. It resonates with an international audience as a protest novel and literary work. Published just after the draconian fugitive slave laws were enacted by the US Congress in 1850, the book made Harriet Beecher Stowe’s name a household word in the United States.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been published in over 75 languages and is still an important text used in schools all over the world. Written at a time when women did not vote, have legal rights, or even speak in public meetings, Uncle Tom’s Cabin became an important part of the social fabric and thought that eventually caused the Civil War to break out and the southern slaves to be emancipated by President Abraham Lincoln, effective in 1863. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a remarkable example of how one person can make a huge impact to improve the lives of millions of people. Visit the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati to learn more about this important champion of people’s rights, at 2950 Gilbert Avenue, Cincinnati OH 45205, or learn more online at The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble® Overview Henry Louis Gates Jr. redefines Uncle Tom's Cabin with this seminal interpretation of the great American novel. Declared worthless and dehumanizing by James Baldwin in 1949, Uncle Tom's Cabin has lacked literary credibility for fifty years. Now, in a ringing refutation of Baldwin, Henry Louis Gates Jr.

demonstrates the literary transcendence of Harriet Beecher Stowe's masterpiece. Uncle Tom's Cabin, first published in 1852, galvanized the American public as no other work of fiction has ever done. The editors animate pre-Civil War life with rich insights into the lives of slaves, abolitionists, and the American reading public. Examining the lingering effects of the novel, they provide new insights into emerging race-relation, women's, gay, and gender issues. With reproductions of rare prints, posters, and photographs, this book is also one of the most thorough anthologies of Uncle Tom images up to the present day. Advertising Editorial Reviews So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!" Some historians still dispute that Abraham Lincoln actually spoke these words to Harriet Beecher Stowe when he met her in 1862, but there is no doubt that the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin did change history. Her 1852 novel galvanized northern opinion against the cruelties of slavery and became a marching cry for its abolition. It also became the bestselling novel of its time.

And then it faded into a historical footnote, dismissed by James Baldwin and others as a dehumanizing, racist tract. The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin, edited by noted critic Henry Louis Gates Jr., rescues this literary classic from unjust neglect and ignominy. Extensively illustrated. Library Journal Stowe's often-challenged novel gets the red-carpet treatment. This annotated version was edited by scholars Henry Louis Gates and Hollis Robbins, who also provide the introduction and notes. The text additionally is buttressed by 150 black-and-white illustrations and 32 pages of color artwork. One of the finest editions of this book to date. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. Product Details

Question: Who wrote the classic novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin"?
Answer: Harriet Beecher Stowe